Activities for
Responding to
Reading in Year Five
Written and compiled by the Lancashire Literacy Consultants
Year 5 – Teacher’s Notes
§ The activities are not intended to be issued without prior discussion and preparation.
§ The activities require a range of reading strategies to complete. Wherever possible, each activity has a reference to the Assessment Focus being developed. This will support teachers in covering a range of comprehension strategies and provide part of the ongoing evidence for assessing a child’s reading.
§ Many can be used as part of a Guided Reading session and completed with teacher support.
§ Some may be used more than once with different texts.
§ You may decide not to use all of the sheets, and some children may have a different selection to others.
§ You may choose sheets that support work done in the shared and guided session, or sheets appropriate to individual children’s personal reading.
§ Some of the activities are designed to be completed over time – such as collecting aspects of language to use in the children’s own writing. These could be enlarged and displayed so that all the children could contribute.
§ Some activities may need to be differentiated – they are on the Literacy web site and you may download them and alter them or use a sheet from a younger age group (www.lancsngfl.ac.uk/nationalstrategy/literacy).
§ If you do not want to use photocopied sheets, these ideas are easily transferred to paper or exercise books. Or why not download the activity and work on screen.
§ Most of the activities provide opportunities for Speaking and Listening about books and reading.
Year 5 Reading Objectives:
Strand / Objectives7 / Make notes on, and use evidence from across a text to explain events or ideas.
Infer writers’ perspectives from what is written and from what is implied.
Compare different types of narrative and information texts and identify how they are structured.
Distinguish between everyday use of words and their subject-specific use.
Explore how writers use language for comic and dramatic effects.
8 / Reflect on reading habits and preferences and plan personal reading goals.
Compare the usefulness of techniques such as visualisation, prediction and empathy in exploring the meaning of texts.
Compare how a common theme is presented in poetry, prose and other media.
The Reading Assessment Focus - Overview grid
AF / Strategies / Key phrase1 / Use a range of strategies, including accurate decoding of text, to read for meaning / Decode accurately.
Read with understanding.
2 / Understand, describe, select or retrieve information, events or ideas from texts and use quotation and reference to text / Seek, find and understand.
Literal responses to text.
Text reference.
3 / Deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts /
Between the lines
Inference and deduction.Interpret.
Put yourself in their shoes.
Text reference.
4 / Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level / Structure.
Commenting on presentational features.
Why is the text presented and organised as it is?
5 / Explain and comment on the writers’ use of language, including grammatical and literary features at word and sentence level / Language.
Why did the writer use that word / phrase / image / sentence etc.
Literary awareness.
Impact on reader.
6 / Identify and comment on the writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the overall effect / The Writer.
Writer’s purpose.
Writer’s attitudes and values.
Big messages about life.
7 / Relate texts to their cultural and historical contexts and literary traditions. / The Text and the World.
How the text fits into its social, historical, cultural, literary heritage context.
In addition to a wide ranging read aloud programme, and children’s own choices, pupils in Year 5 will read:
· Novels and stories by significant children’s authors
· Traditional stories
· Fables
· Myths and Legends
· Stories from other cultures
· Plays
· Instructions
· Reports
· Explanations
· Persuasive texts
· Different poetic styles
· Classic and narrative poems
· Choral and performance poetry
· There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom
· The Highwayman
· The Midnight Fox
· Street Child
· Sensational
Books I have read this year
Fiction / Date /Title
/Author
/Books I have read this year
Non-Fiction / Date /Title
/Author
/Collect and Compare Story Openings
Find three books or stories that you have read or would like to read.
Titles:
Book/story one: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Book/story two: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Book/story three: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Read the first few paragraphs of each.
Do they start with action, dialogue or description?
Book/story one: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Book/story two: ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Book/story three: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Which book or story would you want to read the most? ……………………………………………
What was it about the opening that made you want to read on? ………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Which book or story did not tempt you to read on? ……………………………………………………
Why? ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Collect and Compare Story Openings
Framework objectives:
Strand 7: Compare different types of narrative and information texts and identify how they are structured.
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF4: Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level
Reading AF5: Explain and comment on the writers’ use of language, including grammatical and literary features at word and sentence level
Assist the children in finding three books or stories with contrasting openings; description, dialogue, action. Ask them to read the first paragraph or two of each book and to discuss the way in which the author has started the story. Encourage them to:
· talk about the type of story each might be;
· what is already known from the beginning;
· what they would like to know more about;
· predict what might happen;
· which book was the most tempting to read and why;
· which book was the least tempting to read and why;
· what techniques have the authors used to draw the reader in?
Identifying Story Structures
Make brief notes in each box to identify the different stages in the plot of different stories.
Story One: Title:
Setting: / Problem: / Conflict:Complication: / Crisis: / Resolution:
Story Two: Title:
Setting: / Problem: / Conflict:Complication: / Crisis: / Resolution:
Story Three: Title:
Setting: / Problem: / Conflict:Complication: / Crisis: / Resolution:
Identifying Story Structures
Framework objectives:
Strand 7: Compare different types of narrative and information texts and identify how they are structured.
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF4: Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level
Reading AF5: Explain and comment on the writers’ use of language, including grammatical and literary features at word and sentence level
This activity may take several sessions as it involves reading a selection of short stories and comparing their structures. Use stories with clear structures.
Discuss the common features of story structure using the terminology familiar to the children. If the words on the activity sheet, differ to the ones used in your class, the words can be changed by downloading one from the Lancashire literacy website and changing the original. (See teacher’s notes).
Supply the children with two or three short stories of different genres; e.g. science fiction, myths, legends, adventure. Discuss the elements that they will be looking out for. Ask them to make brief notes in the boxes identifying the relevant features and stages of the story.
Thinking Ahead!
Title:
What do I know? / What do I want to know? / What have I learnt? / Evidence from the textThinking Ahead!
Framework objectives:
Strand 7: Make notes on, and use evidence from across a text to explain events or ideas.
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF3: Deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts
This activity involves the use of a KWL grid. The children make notes in the K (what I already know) column. They will not have read any of the book at this stage. They would use prior knowledge of the author and text type; the picture on the cover and the blurb to help them. The children would then write down questions in the W (what I would like to know) column. They could note down predictions in this column, too. When they have finished the book, the children could note down what they have found out about characters and events with evidence from the text to back up their findings.
This activity is often associated with non-fiction texts but it is equally useful with fiction.
Story Mapping
Draw a ‘map’ of the main events of a story or book that you are reading. Draw a picture of each setting and event with brief notes from the text. Join each event with arrows to show the progress of the story.
Title:
Story Mapping
Framework objectives:
Strand 7: Compare different types of narrative and information texts and identify how they are structured.
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF4: Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level
This activity can be done at the end of a book or whilst the book is being read. At each stage or chapter, ask the children to draw a snapshot of the setting and main event. This can be annotated with words or phrases from the text that sum up the event.
Raining Cats and Dogs!
Have you ever heard people say things that don’t make sense but you understand what they mean? Have you ever heard anyone say ‘It’s raining cats and dogs’? What do they really mean? How do you feel if you’re ‘feeling under the weather’? Keep your ear to the ground (another one) for some more expressions. People use them all the time. Fill in the speech bubbles with the expressions you hear. Draw a picture for each one.
Raining Cats and Dogs!
Framework objectives:
Strand 7: Explore how writers use language for comic and dramatic effects.
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF6: Identify and comment on the writers’ purposes and viewpoints, and the overall effect
We use expressions all the time that don’t make any sense literally, but we all know what is meant. This activity is designed to be added to over time. When an idiom is encountered in shared or guided reading, or when someone uses one when speaking, it can be added to the sheet.
It is also fun to have a class sheet that can be added to. Leave the expressions for a day or two – see who can guess what they really mean before you explain.
A typical breakfast television or radio programme will provide dozens of idioms.
Some examples:
over the moon
fire away!
stand on your own two feet
under the weather
poke your nose into other peoples’ business
blow the cobwebs away
in the twinkling of an eye
in a sorry state
been in the wars
nagging doubt
if the cap fits
scare the living daylights
See The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms
From Prose to Playscript!
Choose a scene from your reading book that contains dialogue between two or three characters. Change the scene into a playscript. Remember to show who is speaking and how they are acting by giving a stage direction.
Cast:
Scene:
Characters: / (stage direction) / What they sayFrom Prose to Playscript!
Framework objectives:
Strand 9: Experiment with different narrative form and styles to write their own stories
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF3: Deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts
Reading AF4: Identify and comment on the structure and organisation of texts, including grammatical and presentational features at text level
This activity helps children to distinguish between the ways in which character’s actions and manner are portrayed in narrative, and by stage directions in playscripts. Ask the children to ‘translate’ a piece of narrative containing a lively exchange between characters to a playscript. They will need to indicate the setting, and how the characters should act out their lines through stage directions.
It’s the Way You Say It!
Authors often use dialogue to tell you, the reader, how a character is feeling or behaving. Look out for examples like these when you are reading:
“A what?” said Harry, interested. “But why? What happened?” Harry asked urgently. “Gallopin’ Gorgons, that reminds me,” said Hagrid, clapping a
hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse . . .” Write your examples in the lined squares and draw the character’s face
to show how they are feeling or acting. Don’t forget to use them in your own writing!
“ / “ / ““ / “
“ / “ / “
It’s the Way You Say It!
Framework objectives:
Strand 7: Infer writers’ perspectives from what is written and from what is implied.
Explore how writers use language for comic and dramatic effects.
Assessment focuses:
Reading AF3: Deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts
Reading AF5: Explain and comment on the writers’ use of language, including grammatical and literary features at word and sentence level
Ask the children to look out for adverbs that indicate the way in which dialogue is being spoken. e.g. “Sorry,” Harry said quickly.
The more able may be able to identify adverbial phrases that extend the manner in which dialogue is being spoken. e.g. “I never expected this,” he said, in a low, worried voice.
Characterisation
Find extracts in your book or story that present characters through description, dialogue and action. Write the extracts in the space provided.
DescriptionTitle:
How does this description make you feel about this character? Would you like them? Why? Why not?
Dialogue
Title:
How do the characters feel? How do they feel about each other?
Action
Title:
What does the action tell you about what the character is like? What type of person do you think they are?
Characterisation
Framework objectives: